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Recordings

'Delightfully sung by Bott and Cornwell to a joyful accompaniment' (Gramophone)'Stylish interpretations … elegantly shaped wind playing by The Parley of Instruments … the disc provides valuable insight into early 18th c ...» More

Details

Song: The miller of Dee
There was a jolly miller once lived on the River Dee

There was a jolly miller once lived on the River Dee, He worked and sung from morn ’till night, no lark more blithe than he. And this the burthen of his song forever used to be: I care for nobody, no, not I, if nobody cares for me.

I live by my mill, God bless her, she’s kindred, child and wife; I would not change my station for any other in life. No lawyer, surgeon or doctor e’er had a groat from me; I care for nobody, no, not I, if nobody cares for me.

When spring begins its merry career, Oh! how his heart grown gay. No summer drought alarms his fears, nor winter’s sad decay, No foresight mars the miller’s joy, who’d wont to sing and say: Let others toil from year to year, I live from day to day.

Thus like the miller bold and free, let us rejoice and sing; The days of youth are made for glee, and time is on the wing. This song shall pass from me to thee, along the jovial ring: Let heart and voice and all agree to say, ‘Long live the king’.

The Miller of Dee comes from Thomas Arne’s ballad opera Love in a Village (1762) and uses a tune, ‘The budgeon it is a delicate trade’, that appeared in several ballad operas from the 1720s and ’30s. Only the first verse appears in Love in a Village, so we have added the others from a version published in The Convivial Songster (1782).